1210 Locust Street (at 13th Street)
St. Louis, Missouri 63103
www.christchurchcathedral.us

The St. Louis Chamber Chorus takes pride in its long association with Christ Church Cathedral (last performing here May 15, 1999), which can fairly be said to be the single most important church in the St. Louis classical music scene. The building is also unique among St. Louis churches in having been named a National Historic Landmark by the U.S. Department of the Interior. This honor, awarded in 1995, is a step above listing in the National Register of Historic Places and indicates national significance. The church is the most important surviving work by Leopold Eidlitz (1823-1909), the New York architect, born in Prague, who was recognized in his day as one of the leading architects in the nation, and in fact Christ Church was acknowledged to be the finest of his thirty church designs.

The Episcopal parish of Christ Church, founded in 1819, started its third building in 1859, but the Civil War halted construction, and the church was not occupied until 1867. The tower and porch were not added until 1910, and if you look closely, you can see where the flying buttresses have never been completed. The church was made the cathedral, the seat of the bishop, in 1888. Eidlitz envisioned it as French Gothic of the thirteenth century, but his rounded apse was screened in 1910 by the monumental reredos by English sculptor Harry Hems, giving the church a more English appearance. Plans made in 1940 by Nagel & Dunn to move the organ from the transcepts to the rear balcony were carried out twenty years later, and further renovations in 1968 by Burks & Landberg moved the altar to the crossing, replaced the pews with movable chairs, and added the metal balcony below the clerestory windows, a feature which gives the nave a flavor of the Italian Gothic. The hanging banners represent parishes of the diocese.

The interior walls of the church were originally plastered, but they were later covered with a special kind of tile known as Guastavino tile, a structural material often used to create large light-weight vaults. It looked like stone, but unlike stone it soaked up sound, and sealants have had to be applied over the years to restore the building’s bright and resonant accoustics.

Christ Church has an unusually varied collection of stained glass, beginning with the original 1860s windows with their bright primary colors in the transepts and north aisle. The west window from 1896 is by Charles Kempe, a leading English maker, and two small windows of 1917 by the New Yorker Louis Comfort Tiffany are in the north aisle.

Other notable works of art include the nave pulpit by sculptor Clark Fitz-Gerald entitled The Fabric of Envolvement (1969), the wooden doors to the baptistery in the tower, designed by Frederick Dunn and given by Temple Israel (1941), and the Bofinger Chapel in the south aisle, originally built in 1896 to designs of J.B. Legg but remodeled by Dunn in 1961 for use as a columbarium. His ashes and those of his former partner Charles Nagel are buried there.

Notes by Esley Hamilton and Philip Barnes
Photo by Roger Hill